


don't leave me (forever and always)

by madameofmusic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Companion Piece, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4546086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madameofmusic/pseuds/madameofmusic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Derek knows several things about one Stiles Stilinski:</p>
<p>One, he has the most disgusting taste in fast food. Stiles will eat anything greasy and covered in ketchup, and it endears Derek as much as it grosses him out.</p>
<p>Two, Stiles fidgets when he's upset. He fidgets when he's nervous. In fact, Stiles fidgets so much that Derek thinks he doesn't even register his own movement anymore. </p>
<p>Three, he knows when Stiles wants to be left alone."</p>
<p>(Companion Piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2447942">walk away (don't slam the door)</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	don't leave me (forever and always)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [walk away (don't slam the door)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2447942) by [madameofmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madameofmusic/pseuds/madameofmusic). 



> The Derek POV companion I promised ten months ago, but that life got in the way of. 
> 
> I suggest reading [walk away (don't slam the door)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2447942) before this one, but you don't have to I guess. It'll probably make sense either way.

Derek knows several things about one Stiles Stilinski:

One, he has the most disgusting taste in fast food. Stiles will eat anything greasy and covered in ketchup, and it endears Derek as much as it grosses him out.

Two, Stiles fidgets when he's upset. He fidgets when he's nervous. In fact, Stiles fidgets so much that Derek thinks he doesn't even register his own movement anymore.

Three, he knows when Stiles wants to be left alone. He begins first by snapping, and the apologising for it, snapping again, apologising again, rinse and repeat. He moves on to slouching. Stiles sits fairly straight most of the time, even when every inch of his body is moving like his skin is buzzing. He sinks into himself, chin tucking in to his chest and shoulders drawing forward. The final, and last step is the panic. It starts small, barely a whiff in the air, sickly sweet and nauseating, and soon turns into great waves that roll over Derek.

Derek leaves. He figures the Sheriff's condition hasn't changed in a few days, it won't change in the hour that he's gone.

He kisses Stiles on the head, promises to be back in an hour, and leaves.

He drives to the garage, putters around for exactly forty-three minutes, before leaving.

Or trying to, at least. His car breaks down.

It's always amused him, that whatever profession people decide to go into, that those are the parts of their lives that are the worst kept. In his case, it's his car, with its bloodstained seats (he'd at least managed to get the actual stains out, but the smell remained), the worn tires, the small dents in the body.

It breaks down.

Luckily, he is a mechanic. He gets it fixed in two hours and thirty one minutes to fix it.

He forgets to call Stiles by the time his hands are greasy, but there's been no word, so he figures everything is okay.

He figures wrong.

He drives to the hospital. He walks up to the Sheriff's room.

There are doctors and nurses everywhere, and no Stiles.

He pulls a nurse aside, and asks her if she's seen him. She tells him Stiles left.

He pulls out his phone, and texts Stiles.

He receives a text back.

His heart drops into his stomach.

_Okay._ He texts back.

  
  


Sometimes he still thinks about the fire. He thinks about coming home from school with Laura, hearing sirens and dropping his backpack, running. He thinks about how Laura dropped to her knees, sobbed, how Sheriff Stilinski, at that time just a deputy, had come over, and dropped to his knees as well, wrapped an arm around Laura’s shoulder.

He remembers the acidic taste of bile in the back of his throat as the shock wears off, and the smell of burnt flesh and acrid smoke rolled over him in waves, how he swore he could still hear the screams of his smallest cousins, the crying of his little brothers as they strained through the bars of the basement windows.

It was his fault. He knows this, recognises it’s truth with every fiber of his being.

His family burned alive, trapped in their homes by mountain ash and locked doors, because of him.

Because of Kate too, but if she was the bullet, he was the gun, the trigger. He loaded her up, told her about his family, about how to get into the house, how the door to the basement jammed sometimes, how every single pack member would be over that day for the end-of-summer barbeque.

She may have set the fire, laid the ash, jammed the door, but he was the one who killed them.

  
  


He sees Stiles at the funeral. Of course he does.

Stiles sits in the front row, back ramrod straight and eyes as dry as bones, as the desert.

To anyone else, he looked put together. Sad, but held together by whatever cosmic duct tape he had called to his will that day.

Derek notices, though. Derek notices how his hands twist together, how his eyes were ringed with dark circles, his hair run through and tugged at until it was almost frayed, like the ends of a fuse on a cartoon bomb.

Derek notices.

Derek waits.

Then, after all of the speeches are over, after the final sermon, and then the procession to the atrium, and the adjoining rooms for the wake, he finds Stiles.

It’s not hard, not really. Any werewolf with half a nose and some amount of common sense could have found him. The smell of his misery seeps under the door of the small bathroom, tucked in the corner of the building.

He raises his hand to knock. He drops it back down to his side.

He repeats this motion several more times, before resigning himself to leaning against the wall next to the bathroom.

He waits. It’s nearly forty minutes before there’s any sound from the other side of the door besides quiet, measured breathing.

Derek pushes himself off the wall, and stands in front of the door.

It hits him.

_What would he say?_ I’m sorry for leaving? I’m sorry your dad died? I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you like you needed me too, I’m sorry for ever thinking leaving you alone with a dying parent at the hospital was a good idea-

Stiles opens the door. Stiles runs right into him.

Derek opens his mouth.

Stiles leaves.

Derek slumps forward, pressing himself against the doorjamb.

_I’m sorry. You deserved better._

  
  


He remembers, vaguely, the day Claudia Stilinski died, a few months before the fire, a few months after he first met Kate. His mother had come home, and they could all feel her distress almost instantaneously with the moment she steps foot in the house.

She puts Laura on dinner duty, and disappears into her office.

She comes out once more when dinner is ready and the rest of the family is already seated, waiting for their alpha.

She stands behind her chair at the head of the table. The soft _click-click-click_ of her nails against the wood is the only sound in the room, before she clears her throat, and pulls out her chair.

“Claudia Stilinski is dead.” She says it so quietly that any normal being would have missed. Derek almost does, anyway, engrossed as he is texting Kate, thinking he’s snuck his phone under the table.

Cora, only ten at the time, still wide-eyed and full of wonder, speaks up. “Who’s Claudia Sti- stil-” She stumbles over the word, looks to her left, up to Peter.

“Stilinski.” He says, and she repeats it under her breath. Peter looks towards Talia. “When?”

“This morning, early. The deputy wasn’t there, I heard.”

Peter nods, looks down at his plate. By now, Derek has tucked away his phone, and looks puzzled, over the faces of every adult in the room.

“Who was she, mom?” He asks, tilting his head.

His mom smiles. “A friend of mine, from high school. She had a little boy, about Cora’s age, used to babysit you and Laura when I first got the job in the DA’s office.”

Derek nods, and then turns back to his plate, sombered.

The pack is silent for a moment more, before the mood lightens, and dinner continues, though no one comments when Talia isn’t as animated as usual, the smile on her face fighting to stay there.

  
  


Of all the places he could see Stiles, it had to be at the grocery store. Because of _course_ , that’s just how Derek’s luck works.

“Excuse me.” Derek turns, and it’s like someone jabbed a fork covered in wolfsbane through his chest.

“Stiles-” Stiles interrupts him with an impatient noise, and a small wave of his hand.

“Can you move please?” Derek grabs the cart, and practically lifts it out of Stiles’s way, staring at him as he does so. The circles under his eyes haven’t gotten any better since he saw him at the funeral, and he still looks like he’s barely holding it together.

“Stiles, I’m-” Stiles grabs the first carton his hand touches, and practically throws it into the cart before striding away.

Derek catches his scent as he passes. It still reeks of misery, and it pains Derek like the misery is his own.

He stands in the middle of the aisle, watching Stiles walk away. He pulls his cart back towards him, and shakes his head, continuing to shop.

He finishes, lifts his bags and walks out to his car. On his way out, he passes Stiles’s Jeep. Stiles is hunched over the steering wheel, and Derek can tell from here he’s three seconds away from a panic attack. He takes one step in Stiles’s direction, but stops, backs away, and walks to his own car.

Stiles doesn’t need him, not now.

  
  


He remembers a lady with a little boy coming over to his house when he was younger. The lady was pale, and dotted with moles, like Stiles. The little boy was the same age as Cora, but less reserved curiosity like her and more loud happiness, wide grins, and lanky limbs that didn’t quite fit his body type.

Derek thinks, in retrospect, this was probably Stiles and Claudia Stilinski. He was only eight at the time, Stiles two, and Claudia still alive for eight more years.

Stiles didn’t go by Stiles then. It was some unpronounceable name that only sounded good coming from Claudia’s mouth.

Talia used to send Cora and Stiles off with Derek, to go play in the woods while she and Talia sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee, reminiscing.

Derek used to prop himself up against a tree, and read while Cora and Stiles played in front of him. Talia would call them in after a few hours, and Claudia would leave, with Stiles on her hip.  

Derek had forgotten about it until the first time he saw a picture of Claudia. He had been getting something from Stiles’s wallet and the picture fell out, worn in a way that suggested long fingers rubbing over the edges of the photograph.

Derek asked Stiles about it, one day, and Stiles smiles, hand going to the pocket his wallet is in. “It’s nothing.” He says, and Derek doesn’t ask about it anymore.

  
  


He wakes up to the familiar sound of Stiles’s jeep. For a second, he forgets. He forgets they’re not together, and smiles, burrowing further into his bed. Stiles is home, after his shift at the station. He’s home, and they can rest, together, maybe watch a movie-

He stops.

He sits up. He pulls on his pajamas, throws on a robe, and walks downstairs.

He waits, hesitates behind the door. He can hear Stiles shuffling around on the other side. He hears the shuffling get further away, and presses his eye to the peephole, and sees Stiles walking away.

He’s opening the door, calling his name before he realises it.

Stiles freezes, body going rigid, before he turns. He lifts his hand in a half hearted wave. The corners of his lips move upward, but his eyes stay the same. “Derek."

Derek gapes, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. He settles on a frown, and takes an aborted step forward, before remembering that he can’t do that anymore, can’t pull Stiles into a hug and draw his pain away from him like he aches to do. “What are you-” He starts, and then looks down, pensive frown turning concerned. “Come in. You’re going to freeze to death.” He says before he can stop himself.

“I’m not as weak as you think I am.” Stiles says, the bite in his voice sharp. Derek almost smiles, the ghost of a grin passing over his lips and making one side of them quirk upwards. It was the same response Stiles gave before every fight, after every injury, and every time Derek tried to keep Stiles’s own humanity from being his downfall.

He steps to the side, lets Stiles into their- no, Derek’s house. He idly runs his fingers over the edge of the coffee mug he’d grabbed on the way out to meet Stiles. He watches Stiles for a second, takes in the now seemingly ever-present dark rings, and the general barely-held-together appearance, before speaking.

Or, trying to. “Stiles-”

He’s interrupted. “Have you seen my hoodie? The purple one, with the fur?” Stiles sounds desperate, and for a second Derek feels guilty.

Because it’s under his bed, he’s had ever since Stiles moved out. Stiles’s scent disappeared off of it weeks ago, but Derek kept it anyway, pretending it still smelt of lemon and grass and home-

“No.” He lies, trying to seem as convincing as possible. Stiles doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t press.

He’s out the door before Derek can say anything, mumbling a thanks and Derek feels even more guilty, because maybe that sweater could wipe the tired, sad look off of Stiles’s face, but Derek is a selfish man.

  
  


Derek bought the house with Stiles in mind, made sure to pick one out with a little breakfast nook and a fireplace. He’d told him originally that he was just searching for a house because the loft was getting a little too small with all of the pack frequenting it all the time.

But he’d had a second key made as soon as the deed was his, and he presented it to Stiles that day. Stiles had lived with him for six months before he moved out, and they were the best six months of Derek’s life.

Because he got to wake up to Stiles grumbling at him about coffee, and he got to hear Stiles’s terrible, off-key singing in the shower as he made breakfast, and he got to crawl into a bed every night that smelled like love and home and everything he’d been missing since the fire.

Derek had made plans to outfit one of the rooms as a library for all of Stiles magical tomes, was going to get shelves the day Stiles called him from the hospital, voice shaking as he relayed the news.

Retrospectively, Derek was glad he never bought shelves.

  
  


Derek feels the curls of guilt in his sternum for two days before he gives in and throws the sweater in the wash. He does it quickly before he can regret it, tossing it in his car and driving over to the Stilinski house.

He considers just leaving it on the porch, but he needs to see Stiles again, needs to hear his voice one more time, because he promises that this time, he’ll leave Stiles alone, stop trying to talk to him.

He knocks three time, slowly and deliberately. He can hear Stiles’s heartbeat, something he thinks he’ll always be attuned to. He waits, rocking back and forth with the fabric clutched in his hands so tightly his knuckles are turning white.

He looks up, sees Stiles. Raises a hand, but Stiles is gone, body disappearing behind the windowsill. He knocks again, just once, and then takes out a piece of paper.

He writes “I’m sorry,” and considers writing more, but the paper is too small to describe the way the bed is cold even with the heat all the way up, how breakfast is quiet without Stiles’s morning mumbling, how Derek wakes up every morning and for a second believes he’ll be able to turn over and see Stiles laying next to him and that the past two months would have been a dream and that they’ll be going to have weekly lunch with Stiles’s dad that afternoon.

But he can’t, so he shoves the pen back in his pocket, and drops the hoodie on the ground.

He walks back to his car, and drives away, hands gripping the wheel so hard the leather creaks.

  
  


Their relationship had never been smooth. From that first time in the woods, to the wolfsbane bullet, to the kanima, to finally kissing after one particularly brutal battle and then not speaking for two weeks after, it had been like a particularly bumpy rollercoaster. But then Stiles had gone off to college, and when he came back that December, it was like something had changed.

They settled into a… system, of sorts. They didn’t talk about their violent tendencies toward one another in the past (mostly because Derek could counter Stiles’s “you slammed my head against a steering wheel” with “you had me arrested for murder”, among other things), and Derek didn’t try to keep Stiles from any magic he might try or battles he wanted to be part of (which was all of them). In return, Stiles didn’t get on Derek for throwing himself in front of other pack members and taking the highest amount of near-fatal wounds.

It worked, for years, through college and Stiles training with Deaton to control the little spark of magic he had, and past that until Derek bought the house and was ready to fucking _propose_ , and then the Sheriff died.

Derek tried to feel angry that Stiles would toss that away seemingly so easily, but he just couldn’t will himself to feel anything but empathy.

Because he got it. He’d done the same with all of his human friends, had tried to do the same with Laura, after his family died.

In the end, he got it. He understood, no matter how much it hurt him to.

  
  


Stiles doesn’t come to pack meetings anymore.

Somehow, even without Stiles to distract Scott with stupid stories, and bicker with Lydia about the best way to deal with whatever new magical entity was on the table, they get even less done. The mood is more serious now, and the meetings don’t peter off into life updates and casual chatter. They’re formal, like meetings with other Alphas had been when his mom was still alive.

Derek misses the atmosphere. He blames himself.

Because Stiles still goes to coffee once a week with Allison and Lydia, and he’s at Scott’s house almost as often as Scott’s at Stiles’s, and he even plays lacrosse with Jackson and Isaac once a week.

But he doesn’t try to reach out to Derek. Derek stops trying to do the same.

A year passes in relative silence.

There’s no major creature that requires Stiles’s particular brand of chaotic magic. There’s no reason for Stiles to _need_ to come around anymore, much less want to.

Derek finds the hole in his chest, the Stiles sized hole that still makes him reach for Stiles in the middle of the night and dream of him constantly, doesn’t go away. It doesn’t shrink, even after he tries dating and finds a nice werewolf woman from the next territory over for a month and a half.

He knows werewolves don’t have mates, but he thinks that if they did, Stiles would have been his. It _aches_ without him there.

It fades, slightly, when he sees him in person.

Stiles is bent over his dad’s grave, and Derek can smell the sadness coming off of him in waves, can feel it almost like it’s his own. He’s crying, and Derek is a little stunned. He’s known Stiles for more than a decade now, and he’s only seen him cry once, when Scott almost died from a silver bullet coated in wolfsbane.

Derek watches him for a moment before Stiles notices.

Stiles stands, cleaning himself off and clearing his throat before turning to Derek.

Derek sees the punch coming in the tightening of Stiles’s shoulder, and purse of his lips. Derek doesn’t stop him, takes the punch, feels a drop of blood slide down his chin before his nose knits itself back together.

He’s fine by the time Stiles begins to talk.

“You weren’t there. You weren’t there. What makes you think you can be here now?” Derek frowns, body starting towards Stiles.

“I was there. I came back. You were gone.”

Stiles barks out a laugh, face twisting into a horrible mixture of anger and sadness. This hurts Derek more than the punch ever could. “I wasn’t the one gone, Derek.” Then: “My dad died, Derek, and you were at the fucking garage, working!”

He isn’t wrong. He never got the chance to tell Stiles about his car breaking down as he was heading back, doesn’t tell him that he left in the first place to give Stiles a little time to himself because he gets needing some alone time to process things.

Stiles continues before Derek can say this. “It doesn’t matter now, though, does it? My dad is dead, and you were gone. What are you doing here, Derek?” He sounds angry, so, so angry, and Derek just mumbles a response.

“Paying my respects.”

“You don’t deserve that.” Derek agrees fully, knows instinctively that the Sheriff would have understood, but Derek still had never forgiven himself for not being there for Stiles that day, or any day after.

“I know.” Derek mutters, and ducks his head, tearing his eyes away from Stiles’s face.

“Whatever. I’m leaving.” Stiles’s fists are balled as he pushed past Derek, and Derek pretends not to notice the hitch in his voice as he says whatever.

  
  


Derek had known the Sheriff as long as he’d known Stiles himself. Had helped him in Stiles’s junior year at the department, had even been offered a job by him as an official consultant.

He knew the Sheriff was brave, bold, and terrifying if he needed to be, but hardly was. John Stilinski understood that 16 year old kids didn’t need an emotionless questioning after the death of their family, but a hug and a promise to find their killer.

But Sheriff John Stilinski was also very, very protective of his children. Stiles, Scott, Allison, the entire pack were his children. Even Derek, though the werewolf was 22 when they first met.

He was 26 when he started dating Stiles seriously enough that Stiles brought him home, though he felt 12 during the official “Meet My Dad as the Dad of the Person You’re Dating and Not Kind of Your Dad Too”.

The Sheriff didn’t bring out the guns or anything, and he wasn’t anything but perfectly pleasant as he promised that if anything were to happen to Stiles, he’d happily gut Derek and string him up for the coyotes.

Derek promised he would treat Stiles with the utmost care, and respect, and then the Sheriff had handed him a beer and asked him how the pack was doing.

And like, he his approval to date Stiles.

Two years later, the Sheriff had asked Derek to call him dad (if he wanted), and helped him pick the perfect house out.

So Derek knew that he’d get it, what had happened between Stiles and he, but Derek still felt guilty at his broken promise, because he hadn’t given the Stiles the best when the Sheriff had died, like he’d promised.

  
  


Derek stands over the grave for a few more minutes, mumbles out an apology, and a quiet “miss you dad”, and then drives to the man’s former house.

He waits for an hour, two, and almost leaves when he hears the familiar rumble of the jeep approaching. He straightens, puts the hand not holding a bag of takeout in his pocket to hide its trembling, and avoids watching Stiles like a hawk as he climbs out of the jeep.

Derek follows him to the door, and stops at the front steps. “Why are you here?”

Derek’s fingers grip the bag tighter as he raises it to eye level, knuckles as white as paper. “I brought food.”

Stiles looks dully at the food, and then sighs. “That’s not an answer.”

Derek drops the bag back to his side. “We should talk. I want to talk, talk to you.” He kicks himself as his voice comes out softer than he wanted it to, quieter than he meant it to be, and stuttering.

Stiles doesn’t say anything, but he leaves the door open, so Derek takes it as an invitation. Derek follows him to the kitchen and sets Stiles’s food down in front of him. He tears his own open, nerves making his stomach ache with hunger.

“You remembered my order.” Stiles’s voice breaks the silence, and Derek looks up, and shrugs.

“Of course.” Truthfully, he didn’t think he could forget it if he wanted to, just like he couldn’t forget the sound of Laura’s laugh, or the way his mom always seemed to smell like daffodils and warmth. It was weird (three squirts of mustard, mayo on both buns, and only three pickles, no more, no less, with extra bacon and absolutely no ketchup).

Derek finished first, and tries not to watch Stiles as he finishes as well. It’s been so long since he’d seen him up close, and he could still map out every mole and the arch of Stiles’s long neck, could almost remember the taste of his skin if he thought hard enough.

“I’m sorry.” He blurts out. Stiles had finished almost five minutes ago, and they’d sat in silence, Derek watching while Stiles played with his straw and tried to get the last bit of Mountain Dew from the bottom of it.

“I’m sorry.” He repeats, sitting up and looking Stiles right in the eye. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I left.” He holds out his wrist when Stiles begins to look tired, like he wants Derek to stop trying. “Check my pulse. I’m not lying. I’m sorry.”

Stiles looks between Derek and his wrist, and shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

Derek stands, hands coming down hard on the tabletop. “It’s not fine, dammit!” Derek feels the guilt in waves now, the guilt he’d been trying to suffocate and smother out of him since Stiles’s text a year ago. “It’s not fine! I left you! I should have been there!” He feels his claws prick at his skin, and he curls his fingers to his palms.

“Calm down. You’ll give yourself a heart attack, getting that angry.” They both freeze.

Because the Sheriff had died of a heart attack, even after Stiles had forced him into a strict diet, and made him go on runs with the pack once a week.

Stiles walks to the bathroom, and Derek hears him retching, and follows. He sits against the door, and waits until the sound ends and is replaced by the flushing of the toilet and the heavy sound of Stiles dropping himself to the floor, against the door.

“Stiles? You okay?”

“Fine.” Derek picks at the seam of his jeans, and frowns.

“I’m sorry.” He says again, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Stop saying that.” Stiles sounds agitated, and still tired, and Derek feels bad, but he persists.

“I will, when you believe me.”

Derek hears the sink start up, and then stop, and then the door open before he hears Stiles’s voice again. “I do believe you.”

Stiles sits down, and Derek turns to face him, until they’re mirrors of one another. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.” Stiles says, rolling his eyes, but there’s a smile beginning to play at his lips. “You’re a drama queen.”

Derek flicks his knee, frowning, but just for show. If Stiles can smile at him, it’s going well. “This is a serious conversation.”

“You’re seriously a drama queen.” Stiles smiles fully at Derek then, and he feels like whooping in victory.

Derek smiles back instead. “Will you forgive me?”

Stiles’s brow furrows, and he’s quiet for a minute. “I think… I think I forgave you, long before that day in the grocery store. I think I knew, really, it wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry I punched you. I was mad.” The words come out in a rush, and Derek feels like he’s just let out a ten-month breath, fourteen tons lifting itself from his shoulders.

“I deserved it.”

Stiles snorts, and nods. “Yeah. I’m sorry it felt good, then.”

Derek shrugs, still smiling softly. “That’s fine, too. I’ve done worse to you.”

“Yeah.” Stiles agrees.

Derek looks down, thumbs spinning from where he has his hands locked together. “Do you think-?” He looks back up, wanting nothing more to kiss him.

Stiles understand, and his shoulders lift in an aborted shrug. “Yeah. Sure.”

Derek leans forward and presses a soft kiss to Stiles’s lips, and he tastes terrible, but he tastes like home, and safety, and Derek feels happy.

The Stiles shaped hole goes away as he stands, having trouble keeping a goofy grin from his face, something that Stiles would tease him about any other time.

“I never stopped loving you, you know that, right?” Derek says, and holds out his hand to Stiles.

Stiles takes it, squeezing as he helps himself up. “I don’t think I did either.”

Derek kisses him again, and steps back, letting go of Stiles’s hand. “Call me, tomorrow.”

Derek’s phone rings as he’s getting into his car, not even a full minute.

Derek pulls his phone out of his pocket, checking the caller ID before he clicks answer with soft laugh. “I thought we said tomorrow?”

Stiles huffs, but he sounds amused. “Time is a human illusion.”

Derek laughs, and then his voice gets quiet. “You didn’t delete my number.”

He can hear Stiles on the other side, breathing quietly, slowly. “Never.” He finally says, voice cracking a bit. “I thought about it, but I-”

“Yeah,” Derek says, and smiles. “Me too.”

There’s a lot they have to talk about, there’s a lot they need to figure out again, because they’ve both changed, they’re different and more fragile than they were a year ago, more careful and tentative than ever before.

But they’ll get it together. They always do, after loud arguments and near-death scenarios, and now isn’t any different.

Derek hangs up the phone a few minutes later, and drives away.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://goddammitdylanobrien.tumblr.com)


End file.
